FOCUS
Warning from history Looking back at the Marchioness disaster,
Tracie Williams points out parallels with Grenfell and the dangers of ignoring recommendations
I
N THE early hours of 20 August 1989, the Marchioness – a 47 tonne pleasure steamer hired for a birthday celebration and packed with 130 partygoers – sank in just half a minute after colliding with the Bowbell, a 1,475 tonne dredger travelling between Cannon Street railway bridge and Southwark Bridge on the River Thames in London. The catastrophe, which became known as the Marchioness disaster, resulted in the deaths of 51 people. In the days following the collision, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) launched an investigation to understand how it was possible that two ships on one of the most famous rivers in the world could have collided. After the findings of the investigation were reported in 19911
, a number of safety
recommendations were implemented, which included improvements to lookouts and navigation lights on boats. In 1999, following pressure from the families of those who died in the collision, the deputy prime minister John Prescott ordered a public inquiry into safety on the River Thames, and the
46 APRIL 2020
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circumstances surrounding the sinking of the Marchioness. The inquiry was held in 2000 and a report in February 2001 by Lord Justice
was published2
Clarke, which made a number of river safety recommendations, all of which were accepted by John Prescott. Now, 30 years down the line, shockingly it has been revealed3
‘most basic’ safety recommendations made after the disaster have, in some cases, yet to be implemented. According to the Port of London Authority
(PLA), many of the older and historical boats still operating on the Thames have not undergone the sort of changes that experts – including the PLA chief executive Robin Mortimer – would have liked to have seen3
. As
a result, the survival chances of these vessels, some of which took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, have unsurprisingly not improved. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency
(MCA) put forward safety proposals to improve the buoyancy of these historic boats. The hulls of modern vessels are required to be divided
that even the
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